Poll: How many charge cycles does your battery have?
My “new” Macbook is my first laptop in about 10 years, so I’m not overly familiar with how long these new-fangled rechargeable jobbers can potentially last. So out of curiosity, I thought I would take a poll of our readership to see how many charge cycles their current Mac Laptop battery is running on. To test this, I am using the excellent (free) iStat Pro widget by iSlayer.
I bought my MacBook on November 3rd, and as you can see, it currently has 76 charges, or roughly 1 charge for every 1.3 days. So, how many charge cycles can I expect?
(For the purposes of this poll, let’s only list cycles for “usable” batteries, meaning those that hold an hour or more of charge time. If your battery currently has 700 charge cycles but only last 5 minutes when unplugged, you really have a portable desktop, NOT a laptop. Put your best guess as to when it could hold a reasonable charge.). Take the poll below and let’s see how many charges the average working Mac laptop has.
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Check out MiniBatteryLogger. Nice battery monitoring tool that publishes to a central database so you can benchmark yourself against other Mac users.
My wife’s has 119 – we bought it in March ’07. Sadly, my iMac just can’t hold a charge.
I’ve had a few MacBook Pros over the years and have been using iStatPro for a while. In my experience, by the time it gets to 200 charges I find the diminishing battery life becoming obvious and I start looking at getting a new one and using the old one for backup.
It _feels_ like it doesn’t last as long before that, but 200 is about where there is no question that it’s getting worse. Mind you, it’s still usable after 200, but the life cycle is starting to be detrimental to my regular use.
(taking a look at iStat, I’m current at 166. I guess I have another month or so before I have to start looking).
I’m at 148, purchased June last year.
damn, i’m at 54 cycles and i bought this in november
My laptop was bought last January and I am currently on 234 battery cycles and apparently 100% health. Certainly it seems to perform near as well as it used to but I am not great at keeping the battery “calibrate”.
i have a macbook the battery that came with it died after only 136 cycles and my new battery is about 148 cycles
Hey man,
I got my macbook in the beginning of october (just before the new versions, I got the screw I know).
But I am very good about taking care of my battery and use the power cord when I can, and let the battery drain fully every few weeks.
I only have 43 cycles on it, and its older then yours. So hopefully, mine will last longer because of my TLC for it.
My laptop was bought last January and I am currently on 12 battery cycles and apparently 100% health.
how the heck is it that you have 76 cycles on it and it still has 100% health?? is there some kinda secret to this? i have 143, and the health is at 73%…
Something really wierd just happened. With my Macbook Pro battery with 23% remaining, my mobile phone battery and my MBP both seemed to die of battery failure at exactly the same time, as though there was an electro-magnetic pulse in the area! It has cut out like this a few times and I wonder if there is a fault. If there is a fault, I could get a new battery under the warranty which would save me replacing it, but I doubt I can prove there is a problem.
My charges are 109 and I bought my Mac in May 2007 which puts me on 2.47 charges per day, that could be because I’m normally not on the battery.
367 charge cycles and 100% health on a black macbook purchased xmas ’06. I think i’m doing well.
I’m at 132 cycles, 100% health, and on a regular cycle. Only run on battery power 4 times a week, and at least once every two weeks, I completely kill the battery and put it on the charger overnight.
For some reason, I get better battery life now than I did back in July ’07 when I first got it.
my damn crappy SR MBP shows 88 cycles and 89% life its about 7months old.. maybe i need to cycle the batteries more. 🙂
319 cycles, health at 88%. It was bought.. erm.. a year or two ago.
The battery still lasts about 2.5 hours while not doing a lot, or around 1.5 – 2 while watching videos
393 cycles and 100% health. I tend to use my battery until nearly dead almost everyday. I got my Macbook when the Core2Duos were released over a year ago. I still get over 4 hours regularly.
18 Cycles had this macbook since the Nov ’07 rev
Last iBook G4 1.42GHz model.
114 load cycles
79% health
26 months
Wow. 18 cycles in the year I’ve had this MBP. Guess Im near an outlet far too often 🙂
769 cycles
78% health
Bought it the day that MacBooks came out.
98 cycles, 97% health and bought it on december 18th ’07 and i use my MBP till i get the warning that i need to charge it..
11 cycles, but this is a replacement battery I got in January. My first battery came with the MBP last March, but by the beginning of Jan I was getting an hour or so of battery life. The Genius at the Apple Store said that such a falloff should not happen until after 300 cycles, but I was somewhat less than that. So I got a new battery swapped in for nothing.
278 Cycles.
84% Health.
I charge when the thing dies, and do the whole drainage for 2 hours and fullcharge thing every other month.
I bought it when the first Macbooks came out.
My PowerBook (April 2004 rev.) had 650+ cycles on it when I replaced the battery just 2 weeks ago. It would last about 75 minutes if no web browsers were open and about 30-45 for active websurfing.
My new battery now lasts several hours and has been through only a dozen or so cycles. But, having a web browser open really reduces the charge duration.
iBatt2 gives this info:
Capacity: 3585 mAh
Design (original) capacity: 4400 mAh
Cycle count: 439
Depletion: 00:25 lost
G4 12″ 1.33 GHz. Bought in September 2004 if I’m not mistaken.
My Macbook Battery Died 🙁 after 601 cycles
I’m at 83 cycles and purchased my Macbook in January of 2008. Yikes!
2.33ghz MBP
66 cycles
89% health
This is my second battery. The first one one was a lemon, didn’t hold a charge out of the box.
mbp 2.4
cycles : 115
age : 7 months
current : 4898
original : 5500
I am at 726 cycles and my health is at 88%.
Just today I had a problem when I unplug the power cord it just shuts off…
I purchased my MacBook in Dec 06. That’s almost 2 years…not bad.
I have 374 cycles with 100% life according to istat. The battery still seems to work for a long period of time. Although, i do feel like it doesn’t last as long as it did when i first got it, not by much though. Probably get around 3 hours of use per charge.
Just died at 511 cycles – MacBook that’s 28 months old and used solidly every day, so not bad compared o some listed here.
Regular Macbook 2.16 Ghz model
Bought May of ’07
259 Charging Cycles, 96% health 😀
I have had my macbook for 18 months.. i have 700 cycles and i still have 100% health.. two programs say that.. istat and coconut.. i think i have a freak macbook.
I have had my Macbook for.. about 7-8 months now. I have 325 Cycles and 89% health…
Had MBP since March 2008.
177 cycles.
85% health.
I can get about 2.5 hours on medium light with normal Internet usage and watching videos.
412 cycles batt health is jumping from like 92 to 94 now to 91
how do you know how many cycles it has?
Look for Battery Health Monitor
Had 621 cycles and still on 98%. Though have the impression it drains faster than it used to do.
Mine has done 547 and the health is 100%. I’ve noticed (or think that I’ve noticed) that in the past couple of days the battery drains faster. It’s really strange, and also kind of worrying. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on it. I think it depends on whether or not you charge it fully before unplugging it or if you leave it plugged in after it’s charged. I’ve noticed that the health on mine goes down when i do either of these things.
Have 476 cycles and apparently 100% health. I know that it drains much faster than it used to, get about 1hr with no AC power. If I plug into printer, it drains automatically. Bought it June 05, so it is now 4 years old. Can you simply buy a replacement battery?
I have 595 cycles and 93% health on a 2 year old MB (Sept 07). I still get 3 hours of watching video, 1.5 hours of extensive math, 5-6 hours editing text. I let it drain completely 1-3 times per week. While still working i leave the power plugged even after it is charged, but i try to avoid leaving the power plugged while it is charged and shutdown.
Hi, I know this is an old thread, but here’s my two cents…
I bought my Macbook in December 2007, but I got this battery a couple of months after, so February-ish I believe. So the battery is around two years old.
According to iStat:
Charge cycles: 629
Health: 99%
I’m seeing a lot of higher cycles associated with lower health. So I wonder if either iStat is incorrectly reading the battery, or if my battery is going crazy. Although, I am getting roughly 3 hours worth of charge before the power drops down into the 20s. So maybe it’s okay/normal?
Hope this helps.
I have a 33 month old black macbook.
411 cycles and still 100%…
And Michelle, your stats sound about right… i wouldent be complaining.
You can check with coconut battery, it gives more accurate results
774
Hello everyone, i bought my Macbook shortly before christmas in 2007 and i have 391 charge cycles. I use it on a daily basis (im a student) and often take it with me into school for working on during lessons etc. My battery lasts for a 8 hour day when charged fully, which doesn’t mean im using it for this whole time… i use it maybe for 3-4 hours per schoolday in school where im not connected to the power plug.
So it works out perfectly for me as i can charge it as soon as i get home. Often when i finally plug it in the evening it is completely drained down to a few percent, which i have read is good for it but im not sure… So basically its still working wonderfully after almost 3 years now and im looking into keeping it another year. It says my capacity is at 95 % because the mAh have decrease from about 5000 to 4800 so yeah what i was wondering is if this is normal and if it’ll hold for another year, anybody have experience and wouldn’t mind giving a reply?
hi all, i have the late ’08 unibody macbook and i have 458 cycles and im on 99% health. i guess not all batteries are the same, or maybe some just take care of them differently. apparently this battery was supposed to die at 300 cycles, so i guess i got a high quality cell. i looked it up and it says im not supposed to, but i discharge this thing fully about every month or so, and that might have something to do with it’s longevity. i haven’t really been paying attention, but the battery life seems pretty much the same as day one, 5 hours of web surfing. others here have said they still get almost full charge on 600+ cycles, and others are reporting 75% health with less than 100 cycles, so maybe it really depends on how well you treat your batteries… manufacturers need to be telling people about these methods, because it really saves you $$$. of course, that could be bad for them if they sold less batteries though, right? a while back the salesperson at at&t was telling my friend that the batteries dont have any problems anymore, so you dont have to treat it in any way, but only a few months later, and his battery doesn’t last as long as it used to… its close to dead.
my macbook is 3 yrs old, it has 942 charge cycles on it… and it has 91% battery capacity remaining… it still runs for 2 hrs without a charge while opening multiple programs
ekta – you have me beat by a long shot, but nonetheless, I have an ’08 Macbook4,1 with 495 charge cycles on it. iStatPro shows 91% health. My wife did not take care to fully discharge her battery in her 07 MBP and her battery dropped to 37% health 490 charge cycles (~15 minutes before it died). It pays to fully discharge your battery and fully charge it at least once a week.